Badshahi Mosque

Badshahi Mosque stands opposite Lahore Fort at the edge of the Walled City and was built on the orders of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb between 1671 and 1673, supervised by his foster brother Muzaffar Hussain. Constructed of red sandstone with white marble inlay and domes, the mosque's courtyard can hold roughly 100,000 worshippers, and its prayer hall is capped by three marble domes flanked by four minarets nearly 54 meters tall at each corner of the courtyard. For close to 300 years after its completion it was the largest mosque in the world, a status it held until construction of the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad in the 20th century. The mosque has passed through several uses beyond worship: during Sikh rule under Ranjit Singh in the early 19th century its courtyard served as a stable and its hujras (side chambers) as gunpowder magazines, and the British used its grounds as a garrison space before restoring it to religious use in the later 19th century. The prayer hall interior features stucco tracery and floral fresco work rather than pietra dura inlay, reflecting the more austere aesthetic favored under Aurangzeb compared to the ornamentation of his predecessor Shah Jahan. A relics room adjoining the mosque houses items attributed to the Prophet Muhammad and his family, including a cloak and hair strands, displayed to the public on specific occasions. Restoration campaigns since the 1960s, including major work timed to the mosque's 1993 tercentenary, have re-laid marble flooring, repaired the minarets, and cleaned the sandstone facade. The mosque remains an active place of worship as well as a monument, and visitors are asked to time non-worship visits around the five daily prayers.